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| Product Info: What is Emailias.com? |
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Emailias.com is a full-service email web site that addresses two email issues:
1. Maintaining contact with websites and others even when your email address changes. 2. Avoiding and controlling the receipt of unwanted email/spam. This service provides a way to easily create and manage disposable email addresses to hide your true email identity. The Emailias.com system revolves around the basic concept of disguising your email address so it is not exposed to those who would use it, give it away or sell it for commercial gain, in violation of your privacy. This is accomplished by using an email alias, which in our system is called an "emailias". An emailias acts like a mask to hide your real email address from websites. Simply put, it is an email address that stands in for yours when you have to give it out on the Internet. All the messages addressed to your emailias get sent to your original email address. A website recognizes you by your mask only, and never knows about your personal (private) email address. An emailias is meant to be used every time an email address is requested by a web site. Emailiases are an inexhaustible resource. Think of them as currency that you can spend freely because you will never run out. An emailias is easily created, and just as easily deleted. When a particular emailias gets on a spam list, there is probably more benefit to suspending or deleting the use of that emailias. Each new emailias doesn't cost anything more than a single click of our browser button to create a replacement. An emailias is meant to be used for only one designated website. You create the emailias and give it to the website for them to use to contact you. The result is many email relationships identified by as many emailiases. The Emailias system makes managing all of them a breeze. And perhaps most importantly, Emailias.com does not require you to abandon or change an existing email address. Rather, Emailias.com enhances your current email system. For example: Dorothy works at BigCompany. Her email address is dorothy@bigcompany.com. Dorothy buys a CD online from LotsaMusicOnline.com. During the buying process, she is asked to provide her email address so that she 1) can receive email confirmation of her order and 2) can be sent the latest online music promotional email advertisements-spam. Although Dorothy would like to get the email confirmation of her order, she doesn't want to continue to get junk mail in her work account from now on. Luckily for Dorothy, she is a member at Emailias.com. With the simple click of the Emailias button on her web browser, she has a new, unique emailias to give to LotsaMusicOnline. Shortly after completing her order, she receives her email confirmation in her bigcompany.com email account. Later that week, LotsaMusicOnline does two things:
During this whole adventure, Dorothy continued to receive all of her normal email messages, receive her order confirmation, and protected her business email identity. |
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What We Do |
Our service intervenes at two critical points in the email communication cycle: your browser and your email inbox.
The actions we take at these two points allow you to control how Internet companies communicate with you, and give you the means to protect your own privacy. You don't have to rely on "web strangers" keeping their privacy promises, nor do you have to fear things like spam mailing lists.
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Background & Rationale |
| As increasing numbers of people become involved with the Internet, it becomes a central medium for both communications and commerce. More and more people rely on email to communicate and transact business. Increasingly, companies are using the Internet as the medium of preference for advertising their business. As with traditional mail, businesses are using the Internet to send junk mail, or spam, to Netizens like you and me. Herein lies the need and purpose for Emailias.co |
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The Value of an Email Address |
Does an email address have a value? Yes. This is illustrated in two ways:
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Email Address Anonymity |
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An Emailias.com account allows a person to send and receive email while never revealing their real email address. This is analogous to having an "unlisted" telephone number.
But why does a person want to have an unlisted number? One main reason is because they do not want to receive annoying unsolicited phone calls from telemarketers. Similarly, unsolicited commercial email messages are primarily why it is desirable to keep an email address private. To a person, the value of their phone number and email address is directly corresponds to the degree to which they wish to keep it private, as well as the degree to which they want to avoid arranging for a new telephone number or to avoid losing website contacts when changing to a new email address. Another factor which gives value to an email address is that online merchants, marketers and advertisers will pay money for lists of email addresses. These lists are important ways for them to get in touch with potential clients and customers. In fact, this factor directly opposes an individual trying to keep their information private: we pay to keep it private and they pay to make it public (to get the lists). Therefore, as more of the these online companies get our email addresses, the more potential there is for them to make money by selling the information to each other. |
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Emailias Semi-Anonymity |
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An emailias is a way for a person to maintain anonymity from a website or other online contact, but it is not a way to maintain anonymity from the law. Emailias anonymity is not a way to hide or harbor those who are doing anything illegal. The information that is sent in an email from you hides or encrypts most identifying information, but this information is recoverable for cases of illegal wrongdoing.
View the Emailias Privacy Policy for further questions about the limited cases when Emailias provides information about our members. |
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Changing the Value of an Email Address |
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The ideal situation is to be able to give out our contact information (be it telephone number or email address) and not worry that we've given away something valuable and lost our privacy in the process. We need to have control of how that information will be used, and if it is misused, we need to be able to revoke those privileges without jeopardizinghow the rest of the world contacts us.
Emailias.com allows anybody to do just that. When a person uses Emailias.com, Internet companies no longer control online access to the customer, the value of their email address reverses. With the customer in control, continued access is more important to a company than selling the cusotmer to others who might mis-use it. Building relationships of trust, respect and accountability become more important. |
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Current Types of Email Accounts |
There are four main types of email accounts that people use today:
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Company Email Account |
| This is an email account that an employee of a company is given in order to conduct work-related communication. Dorothy (see example above) who works at BigCompany, having the email address dorothy@bigcompany.com, is an example of a company email account. All of her email for this account is stored on the computers at BigCompany. |
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Internet Service Provider (ISP) Email Account |
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This is an email account that a person has when they have an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access the Internet. For example, if Dorothy uses America Online to connect to the Internet, then she may have the email address dorothy@aol.com. All of her email for this account is stored on the computers at America Online.
Though ISP accounts are convenient because they come with your Internet access, such email accounts unfortunately tend to attract a lot of spam. Some ISPs create their own spam (newsletters, advertisements, etc.), while others simply sell a list of email addresses to potential spammers. |
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Web-based Email Account |
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This type of email account is hosted by a website that is specifically designed for email. Hotmail.com is an example of this. Any person with access to the Internet can create a Hotmail email account. All of their email for this account is stored on the computers of Hotmail.com.
Though Web-based email accounts allow the user to accept messages from unknown or untested sources, they often suffer the same fate of the ISP account: receiving a lot of spam. To their credit, however, some sites promise to not sell their account listings. |
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Email Forward Account |
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This is email account operates in conjunction with one of the others types. An example of this is the IEEE Computer Society. The Society's members are given an email address with the "@computer.org" extension. However, all emails that are sent to the address are simply forwarded to an email account of the member's choosing.
The benefits of a forwarding account are:
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"Plan on Spam": E-commerce and Junk Mail |
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Spam is usually received as the result of a person providing their email address in an "open forum". Your email address is a sitting duck in open water, unprotected and uncamouflaged. Any time that someone puts their email address somewhere on the Internet, they should plan on receiving spam, and they should plan for it.Therefore, whenever you give out your email address, "Plan on Spam!", but also, "Plan for Spam", meaning have a solution to deal with it.
This issue is increasingly occurring due to the increase in the amount of commerce and transactions that occur over the Internet. To tolerate this plague, people are increasingly turning to website email accounts like Hotmail.com. Dorothy (example in the Product Description, page 3) doesn't have an account with Emailias.com. She has to do one of three things to receive her order confirmation:
All three of these cases are used the most today. They aren't real solutions because in each case Dorothy has to give up something. In the first scenario, if Dorothy gives up her real email address, then she gives up her privacy. She will most likely receive junk mail in her work email account. She probably won't like this, her boss may not like it, and the system administrators at BigCompany don't like their system filled with non-work-related correspondence. In the second scenario, if Dorothy gives a Hotmail address, then she sacrifices convenience and time. She must first get a new Hotmail account, and later log into Hotmail in order to view her order confirmation. And finally, if Dorothy gives a bogus email address, then she sacrifices information and convenience. She won't be able to receive the email confirmation of her online purchase. In all scenarios, the customer wants to receive the order confirmation. Furthermore, in all scenarios, it seems that the online merchant has the advantage: Dorothy has to sacrifice something no matter what she does. Emailias gives control of this information back to the individual. |
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The Solution: Emailias.com |
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Simply stated, Emailias.com enables a person to control who is able to send them email.
Our system is a tool to manage licenses to email (using emailiases). The Emailias.com account provides an interface to create, organize, and control a virtually unlimited number of emailiases. |
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Best of Everything |
| Emailias.com builds on the best features of the four different email account types (as discussed above) and provides a system that enhances whatever email program a user has. Based largely on the principle behind the forwarding account type, Emailias makes use of what has, up till now, been neglected as a tool to protect email identity. |
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Enhance Existing Email Accounts |
| An Emailias.com account is used to enhance your existing email strategy. As discussed above, the strategy for many people is to have several email accounts: one for work, one for home, one for school, one or more for receiving spam. The problem with this strategy is you give up convenience and lose time because you have to check several accounts to read your messages. Emailias.com allows you to have the advantages of several accounts but consolidated under your one existing email account. |
